Dark Horse Launches Comics on Apple’s iBookstore

Dark Horse is notable among comics publishers for going its own way on digital distribution, selling digital comics and graphic novels via its own app rather than a broader platform like comiXology. On the other hand, their comics have been available in the Kindle and Nook stores for quite some time, and they have just added another e-book platform: Apple’s iBookstore.

The official announcement says that “Dark Horse is now one of the most widely distributed comics publishers digitally.” They certainly have hit all the major platforms at this point, except the comics-specific comiXology. They launch in the iBookstore with over 200 titles, including Hellboy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mass Effect, and the Star Wars comics, which may bring a whole new audience to these graphic novels—now a search in the iBookstore will turn up Star Wars graphic novels as well as the prose novels. The manga selection is rather slim—just a few volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub—but hopefully they will be ramping that up soon.

As always, it pays to shop around a bit if you can be flexible about the platform. Single volumes of Hellboy are going for $11.99 on iBooks but only $9.99 on Kindle. On the other hand, Star Wars: Boba Fett – Enemy of the Empire is $8.49 for Kindle but only $7.99 on iBooks.

“I’m thrilled that Dark Horse graphic novels are going to be available on the iBookstore,” said Mark Bernardi, Dark Horse’s director of digital publishing. “Our comics look beautiful on the iPad and iPhone. Look for more and more titles to be added every month.”

A former book editor and newspaper reporter, Brigid Alverson started MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters¹ reading habits and now covers comics and graphic novels for Comic Book Resources , School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly Comics World, Robot 6, and MTV Geek. She also edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Brigid was a judge for the 2012 Eisner Awards. Send her an email to wordballoons@gmail.com